Word: meteorics
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When the nose cone hit the atmosphere after its arch through space, its tip got so hot that it glowed like a star. It was, in effect, a man-made meteor that gradually lost speed by air friction. When its speed was low enough (figure secret) to eliminate further heating, a lot of things started happening fast...
...almost certainly covered with lava that poured out on the surface billions of years ago, said Astronomer Gerard Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory. In those days, Kuiper told the astronauts at Denver, the moon's interior was kept liquid by radioactivity, so any disturbance, such as a large meteor impact, was likely to cause an upwelling of lava. Kuiper thinks that smooth places on the maria will make firm landing spots for earth's spaceships...
...optimistic was Astronomer Thomas Gold of Harvard. Gold pointed out that the ring-shaped meteor craters on the moon can be given comparative ages by the way they overlap, and that the walls of the oldest ones are generally low. This means, said Gold, that during the 4 billion years or so of the moon's life, its exposed rock has been slowly turned into dust by bombardment of rays and particles from the sun and space. The dust, kept stirred up by the same agents that formed it, has flowed like a slow liquid into the moon...
Last week, in the British publication, Nature, Florida State University Physicist Philip J. Wyatt suggested one possible clue: "Of the many craters on the earth known to have been produced by fallen meteors, a few have left no signs of the meteor which caused them, apart from the huge holes created in the earth's crust." Could antimatter possibly have been involved? If so, says Wyatt, "no traces of the meteors would remain, due to the annihilation process." Best example is the huge meteor that blazed over southern Russia on the morning of June 30, 1908. Minutes later...
Physicist Wyatt suggests another search at the site for short-lived radioisotopes, produced by intense gamma radiation, which could prove the point. One theoretical flaw in the argument is that an antimatter meteor ought to explode shortly after whizzing into the earth's atmosphere. Moreover, anti-gravity may be a property of antimatter. Unlike other meteors, which fall into the earth's gravitational field, an antimatter meteor would be repelled. But if antimatter does not have antigravity, an antimatter meteor - if big enough to survive the annihilation of its surface - might hit the earth...